The Luxury Hotel Insider

The Luxury Hotel Insider:Exclusive luxury hotel deals, features and special rates from the luxury hotel experts at Five Star Alliance.

Named one of Tripbase's Best Luxury Travel Blogs for 2011, below are Five Star Alliance's newest articles featuring exclusive information on luxury hotels worldwide including special offers and deals at the world's best hotels.

Anantara Golden Triangle Resort and Spa has introduced 187 Pounds of Adorable. Born on March 3rd at the world famous Elephant Camp at Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort outside Chiang Rai, the 85 kilogram baby elephant, nicknamed Nong Sam, stands 84 centimeters tall at the shoulder and measures 129 centimeters from forehead to tail. The bouncing baby boy was born at to forty-five year old Boon Jan, and is her fifth son. He was nicknamed by his mahout (elephant carer), as is tradition, meaning "three" in Thai and alluding to his birth date on the third day of the third month. Being a Garieng elephant, Nong Sam will choose his own formal name at the age of three in a special ceremony involving bits of paper wrapped around sugarcane.

National Thai Elephant Day takes place every year on March 13th. The aim of the day is to draw attention to the elephant which is the national animal of Thailand and plays an important part in culture, religion and tradition. A weeklong celebration at Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort kicked off with more than 60 children and novice monks from local orphanages and schools invited to the resort to learn about the importance of elephant conservation and affording them a rare opportunity to meet the elephants up close and personal.

Surrounded by the natural beauty of Northern Thailand's rugged hill country, Anantara Golden Triangle Resort and Spa is a luxury nature retreat set amidst 160 acres of lush tropical jungles overlooking the winding Mekong River and the border with Burma and Laos. The Elephant Camp offers guests such unforgettable experiences as mahout training courses, elephant trekking ,and other conservation activities.

Tired of the mundane macchiatos at your local Starbucks? Got some cash burning a hole in your pocket? Anantara Resorts has what you need to feel caffeinated and lighter in wallet. The luxury hotel group has
introduced Black Ivory Coffee (affectionately dubbed Elephant Poo Coffee for reasons that will become clear
in a moment) to its resorts in the Maldives and in Thailand's Golden Triangle. While picking coffee beans out of
animal poop isn't new (civets, those hipsters of the animal world, have been pooping out coffee beans since
before it was cool), coffee beans via elephant dung is.

How is this rare and precious coffee made? The process begins with selecting choice Thai Arabica beans that
have been picked from an altitude of 1,500 meters. Said beans are fed to the rescued street elephants that live
at Anantara's Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (GTAEF). Enzymes found in the elephant's digestive
system break down the protein in the coffee bean. Since protein is one of the main factors responsible for bitterness
in coffee, the resulting bean has almost no bitterness.

Beans expelled by the elephant are handpicked out of the dung by mahouts (elephant trainer and carer) and their
spouses. After some time drying in the sun, the coffee is refined at the GTAEF. The roasted beans sell for around
$1,100 a kilogram with eight percent of all sales are donated to the GTAEF to help with veterinary care for rescued
street elephants. Approximately 10,000 beans are needed to produce one kilogramme of roasted coffee.

When it is served to guests at Anantara's Golden Triangle, the coffee is hand-ground and brewed tableside using
technology developed in 1840's Austria. Now all this coffee needs is a fun nickname. #Dumbochino? #Elephalatte?
#Pachyspresso? We'll keep working on it.